Welcome to a World of Spiritual Harmony

I was raised on mashed potatoes and sauerkraut - absolutely wonderful. But nowadays at mainstream groceries, most everything fermented is pasteurized - which kills the good guy bacteria, which is the entire point - besides the flavor, I mean.

So a new company run by terrific people has started up in town - called Fab Ferments. I first ran into them last summer at the Imago festival. And now their stuff is carried at most of the health food and upscale stores in town. The two flavors I’ve tried so far both get two thumbs up from me: Holy Jalapeno Sauerkraut (really hot and wonderful), and Spicy Dill Raw Cultured Veggies - mostly cabbage, but also with white and green onions, dill, garlic, caraway seed, chili and cayenne peppers and celtic sea salt. Check out their website at fabferments.com for more products.

And - to keep those good cultures alive and healthy, I’ve come up with my own method. I get the cooked potatoes, soy milk and tons of butter totally hot. And then add the cold sauerkraut - which heats up the cabbage without killing those wonderful health-making little organisms.

Feels good, tastes good, makes me happy!

Billie Jean was here in town a couple of weeks ago, receiving one of the Beacon Awards at Major League Baseball’s Civil Rights Game, with the Cincinnati Reds. The town also hosted the event last year - and everyone I know was very proud and excited about it, buying tickets to the luncheon where the winners spoke, and to the game the next day. And I loved Krista Ramsey’s editorial in the Enquirer titled Thanks, Billie Jean, for your impatience.

I remember Billie Jean’s impatience as she pushed for the Title IX legislation, which provided equity for girls in sports. I remember her determination in starting the Virginia Slims tour, which morphed into the Woman’s Tennis Association, and helped push for equality for women players at tournaments. She also started World Team Tennis, which has never come to Cincinnati, but provides lots of fun and interest for fans, and a break for players in the middle of the summer. Most major cities now have have their own mixed team.

She won the 1972 US Open, and then announced she wouldn’t play in 1973 unless the women’s and men’s winners earned the same amounts. The strategy worked! The world was just beginning to change then toward equality for women, and America was slowly, slowly beginning to move in the right direction.

Mostly, of course, I remember her match against Bobby Riggs, dubbed The Battle of the Sexes. On September 20, 1973, Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs took to the court at the Astrodome in Houston. It was exciting - I was glued to the set. And most people were sure a woman couldn’t beat a man at tennis - or at anything. We were still weak and whining as far as the culture was concerned. And then - she didn’t just beat him. She wiped him out. Hurray!

She was smart, he was slow. She was focused, he was arrogant. Astonishing, the push, the jolt that evening gave to women. We just didn’t have to take it any more. That evening, plus the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (where women were added late in the negotiations) and Title IX, created the era we’re now in. Once it was someone’s job to track the dollars spent on women’s sports, and someone’s job to push for equal pay for equal work, cranking up the bureaucracy toward equity, the ball started to roll in our favor.

And that ball was the tennis ball Billie Jean King smashed ‘right down Bobby Riggs’ throat’, as Krista says in her editorial. A real game changer, that match.

I had to take a friend to the emergency room at Christ Hospital on Sunday afternoon, and stayed with her until nearly 10 p m. I hadn’t been in a hospital since grandson Patrick broke his funny bone when he was 10 or 12 by falling out of a tree.

I was impressed by the invariable politeness of every staff member I met, and especially by the calm and helpful and unhurried atmosphere, even in the emergency room. These were all very professional folk, who, when they said 10 minutes, meant 10 minutes or less. I also was impressed with the amount of parking, all free, in the vicinity of the emergency room.

I was back today to visit, and found the same helpful and calm atmosphere.

I do find it astonishing that there is a by any definition unhealthy restaurant - McDonald’s or Wendy’s, they all look alike to me - on the first floor. I had a large order of fries for dinner late Sunday evening. But there was nothing I was willing to eat in the little hospital cafe - all meat sandwiches, muffins stuffed with fat, and a salad, which was topped with that yellow pseudo-cheese that looks like it would survive a nuclear blast. At that point, I gave up and moved on to the french fries.

I was impressed. But it could be this patient-centered and polite and professional care is based on focus groups, and on the hospital beginning to view patients as customers who have other choices. Whichever reasons are involved, it would certainly calm a sick and scared human being, and that is surely a good thing.

P. S. Do not think, because I’ve written this, that I now believe in sickness. I do not. But simply want to give credit where credit is due. : >

I love to sit out on the porch under the full moon and meditate. Tuesday night there was a beautiful nearly full moon, with a halo of light around it, so the light was softer and more diffuse. When I first noticed the sky, there were two jet trails crossing each other making a very tight X. When I noticed it again, maybe 10 minutes later, another jet trail had cut directly through the X at the crossing. Soon after, as jet trails do, they had all expanded - and there was a marvelous dragonfly in the sky heading south across the river.

Spectacular to meditate on - in the Medicine Cards, Dragonfly is Illusion - the essence of the winds of change, messages of wisdom and enlightenment, and communication from the elemental world. The story is that Coyote tricked Dragon into changing form, and Dragon got stuck as Dragonfly - lost power in trying to prove power.

An excellent meditation!

But how did this mystical dragonfly happen? How did the third jet trail cross the other two so perfectly? At 10 p m? Is it even possible someone actually planned this? Seems most unlikely.

Where to begin in talking about The Secret of Kells? It’s just an incredible experience, especially if you’re Irish. It’s animated - but it’s definitely not a kids’ animation, though it is the story of a child monk back in the late first millenium, Common Era - probably somewhere in the vicinity of 900 C. E. Since the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 basically ended the Northmen (as they say in the film) raids, it’s before then.

It’s also the story of the Book of Kells - that wonderfully illustrated book in the Trinity College Library, of which one page a day is turned. And it’s definitely the story of the once-totally-forested Ireland, and the myths, mists and fairies of that time.

The animation itself uses those old techniques and styles of Irish art, that are still in use today - always old, and always, at once, new. The use of color, the drawings, the merging of one thing into another. The powerful sense of history, the sense that right outside the Christian abbey of Kells is Summerland, the home of the Ever Young, the fairies (who are more like the elves of The Lord of the Rings than they are like our present-day image of fairies).

It is an experience of a story. It is felt and taken in whole, rather than observed and analyzed. Sound like a good experience? It is definitely that. At the Esquire. Enjoy!

So grandson Patrick is now a high school graduate! The School for Creative and Performing Arts held its graduation at Music Hall last night. It’s a small class - 116 wonderful kids - but the first floor was packed, with some folk in the balcony.

First came junior boys bringing in the colors, then the daisy chain, a group of girls proceeding solemnly with a long floral chain, which defined the stage. Faculty and staff, and then the seniors marching in, each major signified by a different color rope over their shoulders. Theater tech, Patrick’s major, is bright yellow.

No real commencement speaker. A few words each from the principal, a school board member, a student introducing the school counselor, who introduced the survivors - the kids who had been in that class since 4th grade, then a member of the school district administration. Two salutatorians, one of whom presented a poem she had written, welcomes from the class officers. Singing by the school choir. Several of the speakers thanked parents, grandparents and guardians. At one point, the seniors applauded all of us. Then the Valedictorian.

Then the presentation of diplomas, by major. With strict warnings that we were not to applaud and go over the top for our student. Actually, they already had it figured out. With a receiving line strung out along the stage, each name was read with everyone shouting and whooping, and when that died down, they read the next name. Very smart.

After that, it was hard to keep the kids or the audience in order, but the class president presided over the turning of the tassles, and an alumni welcomed them into the alumni association. The choir sang May the Road Rise To Meet You, and then came the march out. All Wonderful!

We took Patrick and his friends to dinner at Sung Korean Bistro, which is becoming the family’s default restaurant for all occasions, where another grand time was had by all. And then it was 11:30! Have no idea how it all took so long.

P.S. Almost all the winners of awards and all the presenters in the class were girls. Maybe two guys. The pendulum has certainly swung. Another indicator of the paradigm shift.

And nearly everyone has remembered - WOW! I am impressed!

Brian and a friend of his - one of my many adopted children - just knocked on the door with a gorgeous begonia, singing Happy Birthday! Plus facebook rememberances, cards, txts, phone calls, emails.

WOW! I thought, since today is mostly about grandson Patrick’s high school graduation, there wouldn’t be much else going on. I am so thankful the rest of the world didn’t agree. Thanks! : >

Another blog entry that basically says we’re out of time to deal with climate change. It is here, and it is changing our world right now.

I’m sure you’ve been hearing all the stories about frogs - lots of different kinds of frogs in lots of different places. There is a catastrophic drop in the numbers of frogs, with some types endangered and at risk of extinction.

What I haven’t heard mentioned much is that global warming is the major culprit. Sure, it’s various fungus or parasites endangering the frogs. But why now, and why on such a scale? Becuase the world is warmer - warm enough that these enemies of frog life are thriving. Just a few degrees gives them more life, increases their numbers - and dooms the frogs.

I’m betting, though it hasn’t been mentioned, that the emerald ash borers, killing hundreds of thousands of Ohio’s trees right now, are the same kind of opportunistic life form. When winters aren’t quite as cold for quite as long, and when the weather the rest of the year really supports them, the borers goes from being a peripheral pest to destroying our woodlands. Which, of course, sets lots of other things out of balance, while it deprives us of CO2 storage, an on-going cash crop, and simply beauty and peace.

We do not seem to be very intelligent life forms ourselves, and we seem to opportunistically successful at shooting ourselves in our collective feet.

And you know how I love birthdays! I usually start celebrating much earlier - same way I usually have the entire garden in by now. But I just bought all the veggies for the garden today, and haven’t even started buying the impatiens yet.

My birthday is the best day of the year - May 24…..wait for it…… 1940! I knew from the time I could figure it out that I’d turn 60 in the year 2000, and was still astonished when it really happened. And turning 70 is a total puzzle. How did that happen? It didn’t take nearly that long to get here.

Grandson Patrick is graduating that day, so there won’t be a party quite yet. Son Brian and I are planning a graduation party for Patrick Keegan McNamara on Sunday afternoon, June 13. And I’m thinking that the celebration of my enjoying this great planet for 70 years will likely be the following Sunday, June 20 - most auspicious, with the Mid-Summer Solstice there.

Of course, you’re invited. : >

This wonderful and powerful new play was created by a young writer/artist/dancer/actor I admire very much. Alison Vodnoy took this ancient Greek play, Oedipus Rex, and made a new story out of it. She and fellow actor Darnell Benjamin brought the love, power and tragedy into clear focus.

Darnell was Oedipus, unwittingly pronouncing his own fate as he speaks to the citizens of Thebes. Allison was every other character, done with a minimum of props and with a deft touch. Jocasta’s hanging was real, to the eyes of those of us in the audience. And again, at the end, when Jocasta’s red scarf, the only reminder Oedipus has of his former life, is stolen, it is devastating for us as well.

And as always, I re-write these old texts. I cannot, for instance, tolerate Romeo and Juliet, the waste of all that joy and beauty. Here, I’d call for more transparency on the part of the Corinthian king, or even the shepherd. If Oedipus had known that was not his birth father, the entire tragedy could have been averted. He could have just stayed in Corinth, which needed his leadership, lived the noble life he pictured for himself, and probably brought Grecian democracy to the world much sooner.

And of course his real father, the King of Thebes, who cast him out, nonetheless died at the hands of his son. At the beginning and at the end of this re-telling, the question hanging in the air is - What is fate? Does it truly determine our beginnings and ends? My answer always is - don’t push the river. Work with the river, and find a way to assist the river in getting you where you want to go.

Whenever this play is performed again - go see it. It’s important.